Now We Shall Be Entirely Free Page 6

  He picked up the papers from the table but as Medina began the translation the woman interrupted him. It was a single sentence, vehement, and aimed at Don Ignacio, who visibly flinched.

  The colonel looked at Medina. “Lieutenant?”

  “One moment, please . . . ” said Medina. He spoke to the woman who answered him in a quieter voice. The child, who had been sleeping throughout the story of the massacre, had woken. It stared up at the carved ceiling, an expression of panic on its face.

  “She says,” said Medina, “that they cut her hair.”

  “Her hair?” said the colonel. “Her hair does not look to have been cut in years.”

  “No,” said Medina. “The girl in the priest’s house. After she was violated they cut off her hair.”

  “In God’s name, why?” asked the colonel.

  Medina glanced at the woman, then back to the colonel. “To insult her,” he said.

  When the witnesses had been led from the room, when those still in the room could no longer hear the child’s crying and had endured together a full minute of silence, the heat pooling like oil on the wood of the floor, the colonel straightened himself in his chair.

  “Corporal Calley?”

  “Sir.”

  “Stay seated. You are ready to give your testimony?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You were interviewed by Captain Henderson at the Convento barracks last . . . ” He looked at Henderson.

  “Six days ago,” said Henderson. “The 5th of the month.”

  “I’m afraid, Corporal, you will need to repeat yourself somewhat for the benefit of those of us who were not present. Now then. You told Captain Henderson you had become detached from your unit some forty-eight hours before you came upon the village. Morales, I mean.”

  “Yes, sir. I had gone foraging with Private Withrington. We had gone a mile or more when we found a farm and made arrangements with the farmer to have some potatoes.”

  “What sort of arrangement was that I wonder?”

  “Well, sir, I had a clay pipe to give him, and Withrington had a handkerchief.”

  “Very proper. So you obtained your potatoes.”

  “Yes, sir. But when we set off back we met with the enemy who started sniping us from the woods. We returned fire and kept moving as best we could but we hadn’t much in the way of cover and after a while Private Withrington was shot in the belly. Down here, on the right. I did what I could for him but I doubt the surgeon could have saved him and he was gone soon enough.”

  “I am very sorry to hear it. How did you escape?”

  “It was coming on dark, sir. I stayed where I was and kept my head down. I shot at any of the enemy who showed themselves. When it was properly dark I set off again to find the others but finding no sign of them and knowing the enemy was about I decided I should make my way as best I could.”

  “And how did you know which way to go?”

  “It was a clear night, sir. I found the North Star. I made that my guide.”

  “And that was well done, Calley. Now let us come to the village.”

  “That was the next night, sir. I saw the light of the fires.”

  “You were still alone?”

  “I was, sir.”

  “You must have been wary. It could have been the enemy in the village.”

  “I was wary, sir. I found a place I could look down on them without risk of being seen.”

  “You were perhaps on the same hill as the witnesses.”

  “It may be, sir. But I didn’t see anyone else there.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Houses on fire. Men running to and fro.”

  “The men were soldiers?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “They were ours?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you speak to any?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Why not?”

  “I didn’t know how they would take to me.”

  “So how did you know they were ours?”

  “By their oaths, sir.”

  “You could hear that from where you were?”

  “I could.”

  “And could you identify them? What were their uniforms?”

  “With respect, sir, by this time men were wearing whatever they could find to keep them warm. There wasn’t much red and white left. Long coats if they had them. Scarves round their heads. I’d say it was men from different regiments.”

  “Men who had become lost like you?”

  “I suppose so, sir.”

  “Did you see them shooting the villagers?”

  “I did hear shots, sir.”

  “Did you see the hanged men?”

  “I did, sir.”

  “What did the village look like to you?”

  “A place in hell, sir.”

  “In hell?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The colonel conferred in whispers with Captain Henderson. Henderson turned over a sheet of paper from among the small pile in front of the colonel and indicated a place about halfway down the page. The colonel nodded. Don Ignacio kept his gaze on Calley and for a moment Calley allowed himself to lock eyes with him.

  The colonel cleared his throat. “Very well. Let us come to the officer. You told Captain Henderson you saw an officer at the village. May we assume this was the same man the witnesses have just described to us?”

  “It sounded right, sir.”

  “The witnesses spoke of him wearing a fur hat.”

  “Yes, sir. A busby.”

  “So you identified him as a hussar.”

  “From the busby, sir.”

  “Though you have already stated that men wore whatever they could find that might defend them from the cold. This applied to officers too?”

  “All, sir.”

  “So this busby might have been acquired at some point on the retreat?”

  “It’s possible, sir.”

  “Captain Henderson asked you if you had heard the officer addressed by name. You said you had.”

  “Yes, sir. By rank and name.”

  “From the hill?”

  “I was not so far away, sir. And the man was shouting for him.”

  “Very well. We have examined the army list, the relevant parts. We have a name that would seem to match the one you gave to Captain Henderson. Can you read, Corporal?”

  “The Lord’s Prayer, sir. The regiment’s name. My own.”

  “Then you will step outside this room with Captain Henderson. He will speak the name we have found and you will tell him if it is, to the best of your belief, the name you heard at Morales. You understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The colonel turned to Don Ignacio. “You will not take it amiss, I hope, if the name of this officer remains for the moment a matter exclusively for the army? It is a very delicate thing. The man may be entirely innocent.”

  Don Ignacio moved a shoulder, a strangely expressive gesture that seemed to suggest he found the idea of an innocent British officer almost incredible.

  “Thank you,” said the colonel. Then, “Go ahead, Henderson.”

  Calley and Henderson went outside. Henderson closed the doors and both men crossed the terrace to the top of the stairs, out of earshot. They stood in columns of heat, the light from the white walls dazzling them.

  “Am I doing all right then, sir?”

  “All right?”

  “In there. With the colonel.”

  “All we want from you is the name of the officer responsible for the massacre.”

  “And that’s all you want.”

  “That is all.”

  “And with this officer, whose name you want. I’ve been thinking, sir. What if it came down to his word against mine?”
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  “It won’t.”

  “It’s just that I know the army, sir. I’ve been in uniform since I was fifteen. I know sometimes people get mashed up in the machine.”

  “You have nothing to fear, Calley. I thought I made all this clear last time we spoke.”

  “You did, sir. I just wanted to be sure I’d understood right.”

  “The colonel is waiting for us. Are you ready?”

  Calley nodded. From up here, between the tilting of red roofs you could see the blue-black mirror of the harbour. Henderson glanced at the paper in his hand, though the name there must have been in his head for days. He spoke it, carefully, twice.

  “That sounds about right,” said Calley.

  “About right?”

  “That’s the name I heard, sir.”

  “You are sure?”

  “Never been more so, sir.”

  The inquiry was a drama that had reached its last act. The colonel asked Calley about his escape from Spain, the long walk with a detachment of stragglers to the Portuguese border, a place marked by nothing. Calley had commanded. He was the only one with rank. They walked with their feet wrapped in strips of blanket or they walked in bare feet, each step a print of red on the road. They ate grass, berries. Once they caught and ate a bird of a kind none of them had seen before. They had stones in their mouths. They crossed the empty hills like the last men left on earth and those who prayed at the beginning did not pray at the end. Once they realised they were across the border and no longer had to fear French patrols or Spanish guerrillas they entered settlements and begged from people who had almost as little as they did but who offered water or milk, a bite of bread.

  The first British troops they met were a squadron of heavy cavalry outside the Torres Vedras lines. To begin with the troopers stared at them with hard, frightened faces, as if they had come across a company of the risen dead, then changed (high up on their shifting horses) and looked as if they might laugh at the sight of men so reduced. Calley took the stone from his mouth. He spoke to them and they listened like children. He could, he knew, have said anything then, that they would have believed him. I am Christ and these are my apostles. He could have tried that, it had been done before, and to good effect. A cart was found. They went to Lisbon on the back of it, sleeping, stinking, nearer to death than they had been on the walk. In the week that followed two of them died in the British military hospital. One, a sapper called Lower, was declared insane and sent back to an asylum in England. To this story, or those parts of it Calley chose to tell, even Don Ignacio paid close attention.

  “It was a first-class effort, Corporal,” said the colonel. He looked relieved, as if something had been salvaged. The honour of the army. Men’s decency. He brought the proceedings to a close. Lieutenant Medina was requested to go to the witnesses and arrange with them for their return to the village. All necessary funds, of course, would be drawn on the British commissariat. The lieutenant was thanked again. He was excused. Calley was also excused or—after a whispered exchange with Captain Henderson—he was not excused but asked to wait in the courtyard. The board would discuss the day’s findings. When that was concluded he would, no doubt, be free to return to barracks. Calley stood, saluted, and left the room. Behind him, the man in the black coat closed the doors.

  In the courtyard there were only the horses for company, the horses and the flies. He settled himself in the shade, his back to the cool of the wall, his shako on his lap. The air seemed to hold the echo of voices, his own among them. Then he heard bells again, and what sounded like a woman singing. He shut his eyes. Someone, he thought, someone like that cunt Henderson, could come down now and shoot him in the face and they could throw his body in the sea tonight. He often pictured such things. Assassinations, ambushes. How to set them, how to foil them. The one you couldn’t foil. That one. He slept anyway—the walk out of the mountains was no distant memory. It had taken it out of him, drained off, he supposed, some of the vital fluids. But even in sleep he was vigilant and when he felt the weight of a man’s shadow on his face he was on his feet in an instant, nicely tensed. It was the Spanish officer, Medina. “The fuck,” said Calley.

  The officer smiled. Rather than a blade he was holding out a small, fragrant box.

  “Un puro?”

  Calley took one, rustled it between his fingers, sniffed it. Medina let him light it from the tip of his own cigar, then they sat together, side by side, smoking.

  “So where’d you learn to speak English?” asked Calley.

  “My family are in the wine trade. We have sent wine to England for three generations. My grandfather was even married to an Englishwoman, Doña Anna, and when I was a small boy I would visit her and she would speak to me in English. But I learned the language from my father and from the English who work in the town. In Cordoba. It is a part of our business. We must know it.”

  “So you’ve been there then?”

  “England? No. I was to go for the first time in the same month General Dupont crossed the Pyrenees. I decided England must wait for a while.”

  “And you joined up. Bought yourself a commission.”

  “I have an uncle in the regimiento El Rey. As a favour to my father . . . ” He made a little movement with his hand. The clearing of a path, the flowing of a river.

  “See much action?”

  “Not, I think, as much as you.”

  “But you like it, do you? Soldiering?”

  “Not, I think, as much as you.”

  And Calley might have said, you don’t know what I like, do you? How do you know what I like? But hearing the doors of the apartment open they fell silent and looked up. It was Don Ignacio. They watched him settle a broad-brimmed hat the colour of mouse fur on his head. He came down the steps. Medina and Calley stood as he passed them. He looked at them both. Medina made a shallow bow. Don Ignacio beckoned him and they walked together to the horses, heads together. When they had finished, Don Ignacio looked over at Calley, made the slightest of nods. Medina handed him the reins of the palomino then went to the gate, lifted the bar and pulled the gate open. A barefooted man was waiting outside, a beggar or perhaps one of Don Ignacio’s servants. Seeing Don Ignacio, he crouched down and let him mount the horse from his back. Red boots on a torn shirt. Medina swung the gate shut.

  “I am free to go,” said Medina. He picked up his hat (it was at least black rather than yellow). “Though I am to remain in Lisbon at the Junta’s disposal.”

  “What sort of man is he?” asked Calley.

  “Don Ignacio? A powerful man. Or one who serves powerful men.”

  “We all do that,” said Calley.

  Medina smiled at him. “Good luck to you, Corporal Calley.”

  Calley nodded. “One of those horses yours?” he asked. He knew none was.

  Medina smiled again. “For the moment, the Spanish cavalry is without horses.”

  He left; Calley barred the gate behind him. “Just me then,” he said softly. He sat again. He was not short of patience. He breathed upon and gently polished the brass plate on his shako; he combed out the feathers of the plume. He was in the process of retying his sash when the colonel appeared on the terrace above and some seconds later was joined by Captain Henderson and the man in the black coat. They came down together. Calley got to his feet again. As the colonel passed he glanced at Calley, made a little noise in his throat, the meaning of which was anyone’s guess, and went on to where the man in the black coat was readying his horse for him. Henderson, however, had stopped by the bottom of the steps next to the tiled basin. He gestured with his head. Calley went to him.

  “When we are gone,” said Henderson, “you will return to the room and wait there until you are called.”

  “Who is going to call me, sir? When you’ve all gone?”

  “Just wait in the room. And see that you shut the doors behind you. Is that
clear?”

  “Yes, sir. Perfectly clear.”

  Henderson brushed past him. The gate to the courtyard stood open. The colonel and the man in the black coat had already passed through it. Calley watched Henderson free his horse, lead it around out of the shade. Only one horse remained there now.

  He stood in the doorway, examining the room carefully. The table (cleared of papers), the chairs, the part-shuttered windows, the paintings, the woman with the heart in her hand. As if. He stepped in to the room, closed the doors, and not knowing what else to do, went to stand in front of the chair he had been sitting on during the inquiry. He waited. It was like waiting as a boy to be summoned by the overlooker. He told himself to be steady, to trust in what was reckless in himself, and lucky.

  “Calley? Corporal Calley?”

  The voice came from the open doorway behind the table. It was not an unexpected source but the suddenness of it, a voice reaching out for him, invisibly, in the midst of the city’s long afternoon drowse, made him almost cringe.

  “Come to the door,” said the voice. “Once you have entered the room you may close the door behind you. There is nothing to fear.”

  Calley placed his shako on the seat of the chair. He went around the end of the table, paused by the opening of the door, listening for sounds of breathing, for anything at all that might betray what was on the far side, if it was one man or more than one, how close they were. Then he stepped inside and shut the door. The room now glittered with its own darkness, and on that darkness images appeared, curiously, of winter apples dangling on pieces of string such as he had seen hanging from the ceiling of the kitchen where he and Private Withrington had done for the farmer and his wife.

  “Three strides to me,” said the voice. “There is nothing in your way.”

  Calley stepped forward. Three strides. When next the voice spoke it was just ahead of him. Ahead and below. The man was sitting!